2015: the new musée Rodin

Reopening November 12

“Young people, you who wish to be the celebrants of beauty, it may please you to find the essence of long experience here.”

These words – the opening line of Rodin’s artistic testament – could also feature on the pediment of his museum; it was essentially with young artists in mind that the sculptor, idolized throughout Europe, determinedly pursued his project for a museum dedicated to his work. Rodin was not given to making speeches or lecturing; his aim was to exhibit. Rather than offering to teach the young sculptors who flocked to his studio around 1900, he gave them an opportunity to work with him.

Exhibiting sculpture, giving it its rightful place, allowing the public to fully appreciate this particular way of apprehending the world was, and still is, the goal of the Musée Rodin, of its scientific and cultural policy, and even of its business model.